Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 25 February 2017

:: National ::

Racial attack on Indians in US

An apparent act of racial hatred left an Indian engineer dead and another injured in Olathe city in Kansas in Midwestern U.S.
Srinivas Kuchibhotla (32), along with his friend Alok Madasani, had gone to a bar, where he was shot, allegedly by a 51-year-old Navy veteran who shouted, “get out of my country,” before the act.
Kuchibhotla died later, while Mr. Madasani who was also hit, has recovered and has been discharged from hospital.
Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old white man, who took a bullet on his chest trying to stop the shooter, has emerged the hero in the tragic episode that snuffed out the dreams of the Hyderabad-born Kuchibhotla.
Originally from Hyderabad, Kuchibhotla was a B. Tech in electrical and electronics engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University. He had a master’s degree from the University of Texas El Paso.
Anecdotal evidence points to a sweeping sense of insecurity among the three million plus Indian Americans, many of whom are nervous about moving around freely in recent weeks.
India reached out to the family, Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Vikas Swarup said the government will provide all possible support to the family of the deceased who was killed in an attack that left another Indian injured.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took to social media soon after two Indians Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani were shot at a bar in Olathe, Kansas.

India to throw open its border roads to help Bangladesh construct outposts

In a rare gesture, India has decided to throw open its border roads to help Bangladesh construct border outposts in Chittagong hill tracts, known for its inhospitable terrain.
Some areas in Chittagong, bordering Tripura and Mizoram, have no motorable roads and India has decided to allow the Border Guard Bangladesh to construct 13 border outposts using the road connectivity available in the two States.
The Border Security Force, deployed along the Bangladesh border, will monitor the construction activities.
India has on multiple occasions handed over details of insurgent camps operating from the Bangladesh soil, particularly in the dense Chittagong Hill Tract area.
Following the leads, the neighbouring country has acted against these camps and demolished them.
The proposal was first mooted during the annual Home Secretary-level talks last year.
A 19-member Indian delegation, mainly comprising BSF officials, which concluded its Dhaka visit last week informed the BGB that the proposal had been approved.

India likely to unveil its most powerful supercomputer of 10 petaflops

Come June, India will likely unveil its most powerful supercomputer. If its processors operate at the full capacity of 10 petaflops.
A clock speed a million times faster than the fastest consumer laptops, it could earn a place among the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers.
Though India has built or hosted supercomputers since the 1990s, it held a ‘top 10’ spot only once, in 2007, thanks to the EKA built by the Computational Research Laboratories, which is part of the Tata group.
This position was lost, though several ultra-fast machines exist in Indian academic institutions: they feature in the 100s or 200s in global rankings.
The as-yet-unnamed machine will be jointly hosted at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.
For the first time, colleges and other research institutions can log in and harness its power to address problems, ranging from weather modelling to understanding how proteins fold.
The government has sanctioned Rs. 400 crore for the project this year. Most of the machine’s computing power will help in monsoon forecasting, using a dynamical model.
This requires simulating the weather for a given month — say March — and letting a custom-built model calculate how the actual weather will play out over June, July, August and September.
The processing speed of supercomputers is only one of the factors that determine its worth, with power usage and arrangement of processors, being other key metrics that determine the worth of a system.
Top500, the global authority tracking the fastest 500 computers, said in its latest report that China and the U.S. were “pacing each other for supercomputing supremacy.”

Enormous, glowing blob of gas in the distant universe spotted

Astronomers have spotted an enormous, glowing blob of gas in the distant universe, with no obvious source of power for the light it is emitting.
Called an “enormous Lyman-alpha nebula” (ELAN), it is the brightest and among the largest of these rare objects, only a handful of which have been observed, the researchers said.
The newly discovered nebula was found at a distance of 10 billion light years in the middle of a region with an extraordinary concentration of galaxies.
The newly discovered ELAN is known as MAMMOTH-1.

:: Business and Economy ::

India's first-ever auction for wind energy projects

Wind power tariffs closed at Rs. 3.46 per kWh in India's first-ever auction for wind energy projects as the country aims to tap renewable energy to overcome its power shortages.
The bid was called by government-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India for 1 GW of wind capacity.
Mytrah Energy, Green Infra, Inox and Ostro Energy each won the rights to set up 250 MW of wind capacity in a location of their choice and to sell the energy generated to state-run Power Trading Corporation.
Such low tariffs in wind energy come on the back of historically low solar tariffs achieved in a recent auction of a total capacity of 750 MW.
The reverse auction completed in Rewa in Madhya Pradesh saw solar tariffs fall to Rs. 2.97 per unit and Rs. 3.3 per unit when levelised over the 25-year power purchase agreement period.
After solar cost reduction below Rs. 3 per unit, wind power cost down to Rs. 3.46 per unit through transparent auction. A green future awaits India.
However low tariffs could prove to be a problem for developers since the focus will now have to shift to ensuring low costs.
The choice of location is with the bidder so that they can choose to locate the project where there is enough wind resource.
"Wind is a gift to mankind by environment & the historic low cost of Rs. 3.46 per unit wind power shows our commitment to leverage clean energy,” Mr. Goyal said in a subsequent tweet.

The creation of a ‘bad bank’ will help in resolution of stressed assets

The creation of a ‘bad bank’ will speed up resolution of stressed assets in the banking system, but it will also require significant capital infusion in the state-run banks to meet any shortfall, says a report.
The recent economic survey mentioned about formation of a bad bank that will purchase stressed assets and take them to resolution.
“The creation of a ‘bad bank’ could accelerate the resolution of stressed assets in country’s banking sector, but it may face significant logistical difficulties,” international agency Fitch Ratings said in a report.
It said the country’s banks have significant asset quality problems that are putting pressure on profitability and capital, as well as constraining their ability to lend.
It expects the stressed-asset ratio to rise over the coming year from the 12.3% as at end-September 2016, with the ratio significantly higher among state-owned banks.
The rating agency said the banking sector will require around $90 billion in new total capital by financial year 2018-19 to meet Basel III standard and ongoing business needs.
This estimate is unlikely to be significantly reduced by the adoption of a bad-bank approach, and could even rise if banks are forced to crystallise more losses from stressed assets than currently expected, the rating agency said.
It said bad bank’s most likely form would be that of a centralised asset-restructuring company (ARC).
Bad bank’s proponents believe it could take charge of the largest, most complex cases, make politically tough decisions to reduce debt, and allow banks to refocus on their normal lending activities, it said.

India’s demonetisation led to huge cash shortages

India’s demonetisation led to huge cash shortages that have “adversely affected” consumption and like a “vacuum cleaner” it sucked in cash and then was slowly replacing the currency, a senior IMF official has said.
Given the shortage of cash in the market, IMF in its report urged the Indian government to continue to enhance the supply of new banknotes.
If needed consider extending or expanding targeted temporary exemptions, including on use of old banknotes, particularly for rural and remote areas.
IMF said the repercussions from India’s currency exchange initiative will likely persist through the first quarter of 2017.
Real GDP growth is projected to slow to 6.6% in FY2016/17 and then rebound to 7.2% in FY2017/18, due to temporary disruptions (primarily to private consumption) caused by cash shortages accompanying the currency exchange initiative.